Every day I seem to run into new issues where I need to reexamine what I know about the world. It's a very complex world, and getting more and more complex every day. So, I'm going to comment on it here.
It appears that two perfectly identical radar guns can resolve a lot of science arguments. One of the most absurd arguments made by Quantum Mechanics mathematicians is that motion can only be measured relative to some object.
That means that if you have two people inside the trailer of a truck traveling at 50 mph, the two people are stationary because there is no object inside the trailer moving relative to them. It doesn't make any difference if they have a cell phone and talk with the driver who tells them what speed the truck is traveling, according to mathematicians they are stationary. Why? Because mathematically, the inside of the truck is a "reference frame" where nothing from the outside can intrude.
Einstein saw that that was just plain STUPID. And he realized that motion can be measured relative to the speed of light. Light is always emitted at c, and light always travels at c, which is 670,616,629 miles per hour. That is the fastest that anything can travel, so all other speeds can be measured relative to that speed.
Radar guns measure the speeds of moving objects relative to the speed of light. In the illustration above, two men with radar guns are pointing their radar guns at each other while the truck moves at 50 mph.
Einstein's second postulate says that light is always emitted at c, regardless of the speed of the emitter. So, both radar guns in the illustration emit photons at c. Radar GUN-A receives photons from GUN-B at c+v because Gun-A is moving toward those oncoming photons at velocity v. Radar GUN-B receives photons from GUN-A at c-v because GUN-B is moving away from the oncoming photons.
All radar guns perform at least two speed measurements, they measure the speed of a target, and the measure the speed of the radar gun. In Figure 1, the two identical guns are moving inside a truck that is moving from left to right at 50 mph. Each gun will read the speed of the gun (actually the opposite wall) as zero, but it will also read the photons coming from the other gun as the speed of a target. If the guns have the capability to show two speeds, they'll do so. If not, the gun will add the two speeds together. Gun-A will measure and display a speed of 50 mph (0 plus 50 mph) and Gun-B will measure and display a speed of -50 mph. (0 minus 50 mph)
According to mathematicians, this is impossible. They claim both radar guns will measure and display a speed of zero, because they believe that radar guns measure the speed of a target relative to the gun, not relative to the speed of light. And in the experiment, the guns are stationary relative to each other. But how do the guns know that? Mathematicians don't seem to be able to answer that question.
According to a NASA web site HERE, a basic police radar gun can, in theory, measure the speed of an oncoming car by sending out a single photon. That photon hits an atom in an oncoming car as if the photon had its original energy PLUS the kinetic energy of the moving atom. The atom cannot hold any additional energy, so it emits a new photon back toward the radar gun. The new photon has the additional energy (and thus shorter wavelength) caused by impacting a moving object.
This conflicts with what many college text books say, since it is NOT something that the Wave Theory of light can explain if waves are viewed this way:
The image above shows repeated waves of one frequency being emitted by the radar gun in the police car and repeated individual waves of a shorter frequency being returned by the "moving car."
“light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body.”
Yet many many college text books claim that is NOT Einstein's Second Postulate. They falsely claim that Einstein's Second Postulate says that light travels at c independent of the emitting body and any observing body. Radar guns clearly demonstrate every day that that is not true. Radar guns wouldn't work if the target received photons at c. They work because moving targets receive photons at c+v (or c-v) where v is the speed of the target.
I'm writing about this because I have a paper about Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories available at this link: http://vixra.org/pdf/1806.0027v9.pdf and I'm looking for people's comments about it.
This thread should probably be titled THE TOP TEN DUMBEST BELIEFS IN PHYSICS. The word "ideas" seems to give more value to the items on the list than they deserve. But, I can't change the title without causing all the places that link to this page to have bad links. Anyway, ...
I've been arguing with physicists for several years now, primarily about Time and Time Dilation, and this is a list of the THE TOP TEN DUMBEST BELIEFS I've encountered being expressed by physicists. There seem to be a lot more than ten, but this blog is modifiable, so as time goes on I'll add more and adjust the list as required. Here are the top 10:
#10. Singularities are real.
Physicists
will argue that singularities are real, even though that is totally
illogical. They argue it because they can construct a mathematical
model where everything is moving away from everything else (such as in
the Big Bang universe), therefore everything is x distance from a single
point. They do not know what is at that point, and they don't seem to
care. They call it a "singularity." In reality, calling it a
"singularity" just means they have no clue as to what is there or what was there. It is just a meaningless "singularity" in a mathematical model of limited value.
Black
Holes are also considered by mathematicians to have "singularities" at
their center. No one knows what is at the center of a Black Hole, but
there is no LOGIC which says it is a "singularity" consisting of
nothing. What "singularities" do is allow physicist mathematicians to
argue beliefs instead of trying to figure out what is actually at the
center of a Black Hole.
#9. The Big Bang didn't occur at any spot, it happened everywhere.
The Big
Bang was "discovered" when it was realized that most galaxies in the
visible universe seem to be traveling away from each other, which
implies that at some point in the past they were all clumped together in
one point. When that point is mentioned in discussions of it being the
stationary point where gravity is zero (because
everything is spread out evenly in all directions from there) and there
is no velocity time dilation (because everything moved away from that
point), the immediate argument from mathematicians is that the Big Bang
didn't occur at any "point," it occurred "everywhere." There is no
logic to that argument (see dumb idea #5). Logic says that the VISIBLE universe is much smaller than the BIG BANG
universe. During the first moments after the Big Bang, there was no
light, and there probably weren't any particles to measure and create
Time. So, we can only see 13.8 billion years into the past to the point
where light turned on. We cannot see back to the Big Bang. The
situation can be viewed this way:
Virtually
every point within the Big Bang universe is the center of a Visible
universe that is 13.8 billion light years in diameter. Within our
Visible universe, almost every galaxy seems to be moving away from every
other galaxy (with Andromeda and the Milky Way being notable
exceptions) , but we cannot see the point when everything originated.
That point is outside of our Visible universe.
#8. Light travels as waves.
The idea
that light travels as waves had been shown to be false in many ways, but
it is still what is taught in colleges and universities around the
world. Light consists of photons, not waves.
Photons can be emitted almost individually by turning down the power to a
light source. Each emitted photon remains the same strength as other
photons, but there are fewer of them. When they hit a detector, each
hits with full force. This also means there is no relationship between
"wave length" and "wave frequency." An individual photon oscillates in a wave-like
pattern, but the intensity of the light is totally dependent upon the power of the
source and the distance over which the photons will be spread. Anyone
who compares waves of light to waves of water (or sound) is talking
total nonsense.
#7. It is perfectly acceptable for physics to be illogical.
Many many college text books state that physics may sometimes appear
contrary to "common sense," but what is "common sense" in the everyday
world may not apply to the world of physics. It also appears to be a
way for teachers to stop students from arguing that what is being taught
makes no sense. As far as I know, only one physicist believes that it
is perfectly acceptable for physics to be illogical. That physicist posts as "tjrob137" on Google's Science, Physics & Relativity" discussion forum.
If I find there are more, this dumb idea may be moved to a spot higher
on the list. Here are parts of one argument where "tjrob137" made his
beliefs clear:
At one point "tjrob137" wrote:
Logic is a subset of
math. But what I said has NOTHING WHATSOEVER
to do with that, because the world is NOT math
or logic, it just IS. Physics is also neither math nor logic, and is the
systematic effort to MODEL how the world
works.
Moreover, your "logic" is FLAWED
-- you do not consider all of the aspects of the experiments you think you
understand (but don't).
Sometime later, after arguing that
think that I understand Einstein's theories and
how "tjrob's" beliefs conflict with those
theories, I wrote:
So, I'm on the side of
Einstein who felt that the universe IS
logical.
And "tjrob137" responded:
He was wrong, too.
Note the
non-logical aspects of the world are not
related to relativity, they are related
to quantum mechanics, which
Einstein never accepted -- we know he was wrong
in that. YOU are even more
wrong than him, because he at least understood the math and physics
underlying relativity, while you CLEARLY do
not.
So, "tjrob137" was clearly saying that
there are aspects of quantum mechanics which are
not logical.
And that doesn't bother him at all. Of
course, I think Einstein was right in never
accepting Quantum Mechanics. Quantum
Mechanics is all about mathematical models,
not about what is happening in reality.
Yes, the mathematical models often work very
well, but that just means they work until they
no longer work because they do not represent
reality. The mathematical model of the
earth-centered universe is a good example.
It worked for a thousand years, until someone
noticed something was wrong.
#6. Math is logic. The argument that "math is logic" is one I get into very often in arguments on Google's Science, Physics & Relativity" discussion forum
(which is also a UseNet forum). The physicists posting there
constantly argue that "math is logic" while I argue that math may be
logical, but it is NOT logic. The Scientific Method uses LOGIC, not
math to find the correct answers to scientific questions. When an
answer is found that appears to be correct, the answer may be reduced to
a mathematical formula to see if predictions can be generated. For
example, if it is imagined that planets orbit in elliptical orbits and
not in circular orbits, you can use math to predict when a planet will
appear on the other side of the sun using a mathematical model for
circular orbits and another mathematical model for an elliptical orbit.
Observations and logic will tell you which mathematical model is
correct.
#5. Time ticks at the same rate everywhere.
The idea that Time ticks at the same rate everywhere is evidently a key
belief in Quantum Mechanics. It appears to be one of the irreconcilable
differences between Quantum Mechanics and Einstein's Theories of
Relativity. In Relativity, Time ticks at a slower rate for a clock that
is moving very fast, versus a clock that is standing relatively still.
And Time ticks at a slower rate when you are closer to a gravitational
mass than when far away. To QM mathematicians, this is not true. And
they have mathematical models which they use to show it is not true, but
they cannot relate their mathematical models to the reality of
Relativity. To me, Time is particle spin. I have a paper on "What is
Time?" Here's the link: http://vixra.org/pdf/1602.0281v2.pdf
#4. The speed of light
is always measured to be the same by the
emitter and by all outside observers,
regardless of their own velocity.
The notion that all observers will see the speed of light to be
traveling at c is due to mathematicians misinterpreting Einstein's
Second Postulate. It has been proved wrong in countless experiments and
countless ways. I have a paper on that subject here: http://vixra.org/pdf/1704.0256v4.pdf
#3. "Cause and effect" has no meaning in science.
I
was rather surprised to see this absurd belief stated so emphatically
by mathematician physicists. They equate understanding "cause and
effect" to asking why 2 plus 2 equals 4. They claim it is philosophy, not physics. Cause and effect is all about why things happen. The mathematician physicists evidently do not care why
things happen. In one argument I was told that once the mathematical
model is found, "cause & effect becomes obsolete. We
understood this 2000 yrs ago!"
Why
things happen is what a scientist wants to know. It's what the
"wonders" of science are all about. A mathematical model is only good
until someone notices that it isn't always correct. Then someone asks
"What is the cause of that error effect in the mathematical model"? And
the model awaits an overhaul as scientists investigate cause and
effect.
#2. Scientists routinely LIE to the public.
I spent a lot of time discussing this belief with mathematician physicists. They go to great pains to avoid using the word "lie." Instead, they say that scientists "dumb down" or "vulgarize" explanations of their work for the public, because the public is "too dumb" to understand what is really happening in science and particularly in physics.
The debate is usually over time dilation, and whether or not clocks moving fast through space "tick slower" than stationary clocks, and whether or not a clock at the bottom of a mountain "ticks slower" than a clock at the top of the mountain. Scientists and physicists routinely make such claims in news stories and even in scientific papers when they report the results of new experiments. Quantum Mechanics, however, says that clocks tick at the same rate everywhere. Time is the same everywhere. So, clocks cannot tick slower in one situation versus another. And when a scientists writes something that says "clocks tick slower" for a moving object (even if it is Albert Einstein), the mathematician physicists who accept Quantum Mechanics will claim that is just a "vulgarization" or a "dumbing down" of what really happens, and what "really happens" is some mysterious problem with "signals" that are sent between observers and their clocks that just make it appear that the "clocks tick slower." So, instead of acknowledging that experiments disprove their Quantum Mechanical belief that time ticks at the same rate everywhere, they rationalize what was said and argue that it was just a "vulgarization" or "dumbing down" of the topic. In other words, "It is a lie."
#1. All
motion is reciprocal.
The idea that all motion or movement is reciprocal is in many physics books.
Basically, it means that if I am in a spaceship that seems to be
motionless in empty space, and suddenly you pass by in another spaceship, there's no way to tell who is moving and who is standing still.
It will seem to me that you are moving. But to you it will seem that I
am moving. And thus a physicist will argue that all motion is
reciprocal. And, piling absurdity upon absurdity, if all motion is reciprocal, then time dilation is also reciprocal.
The problem, of course, is that the
situation with the two spaceships is totally fictional. In real life,
it costs millions (maybe billions) to send off a spaceship into space, and
it burns lots of fuel which causes the spaceship to move toward countless objects in space that
can be used to measure distances and movement. So, there is no doubt
that the spaceship was made to move. It cannot be logically argued
that the fuel expended caused planet Earth and the rest of the universe
to move away from the stationary spaceship. It is the same as arguing that if I use a gun to fire a bullet at a target, it is equally likely that the bullet stood still and I caused the target and the rest of the universe to move toward the stationary bullet.
The bizarre belief that all motion is reciprocal is the #1 dumbest idea in physics also because it is the basis for so many other errors and misunderstandings - particularly regarding time dilation. It has no reality except in the minds of mathematicians.
Additional thoughts:
I'm considering adding "Spacetime" somewhere on the list. The problem is that the idea of "spacetime" is not exactly "dumb," it's just wrong. It assumes a relationship between time and distance. As I see it, there is no such relationship. Time is particle spin, and space is just the emptiness between objects. The "spacetime" idea came from Einstein who believed that time and distance (and length) were related. In 1905 they knew nothing about "particle spin." Eight years earlier, in 1897, J.J Thompson had discovered that atoms were composed of smaller particles. But Einstein was working with light, not with atoms. I need to think about how to phrase things if I argue that "Spacetime" belongs in the #9 spot on the list. As I think of others for the list, I'll update this page. If there turn out to be more than 10, I may list the remainder as "waiting in the wings" for one of the Top Ten to fade from favor.
I'm also considering adding "String Theory" to the list. The problem is that "String Theory" isn't science, because there is no way to prove or disprove the theory. Plus, it really isn't physics, either. It's just mathematics.
I was surprised to see on the news a couple months ago that a conference of people who believe the earth is flat was held inRaleigh, North Carolina, on Nov. 9-10, 2017. It was a sold-out event, with about 400 people attending. The image above is the shape of the earth as most of them see it. The white band around the edge is the "ice wall" (known to everyone else as "Antarctica") that keeps people and the oceans from falling over the edge.
I also found that there are many web sites run by Flat Earthers, and they also have many YouTube videos where they explain their beliefs. One Flat Earther, Eric Dubay, has a 35 page "book" in which he presents "200
Proofs Earth is Not a Spinning Ball."Four of his more interesting "proofs" are #44, #46, #47 and #48. Here they are:
44) If Earth was a ball, and Antarctica was too cold to fly over, the only logical way to fly from Sydney to Santiago would be a straight shot over the Pacific staying in the Southern hemisphere the entire way. Re-fueling could be done in New Zealand or other Southern hemisphere destinations along the way if absolutely necessary. In actual fact, however, Santiago-Sydney flights go into the Northern hemisphere making stop-overs at LAX and other North American airports before continuing back down to the Southern hemisphere. Such ridiculously wayward detours make no sense on the globe but make perfect sense and form nearly straight lines when shown on a flat Earth map.
46) On a ball-Earth Cape
Town, South Africa to Buenos Aries,
Argentina should be a straight shot over the
Atlantic following the same line of latitude
across, but instead every flight goes to
connecting locations in the Northern
hemisphere first, stopping over anywhere
from London to Turkey to Dubai. Once again
these make absolutely no sense on the globe
but are completely understandable options
when mapped on a flat Earth.
47) On a ball-Earth
Johannesburg, South Africa to Sao Paolo,
Brazil should be a quick straight shot along
the 25th Southern latitude, but instead
nearly every flight makes a re-fueling stop
at the 50th degree North latitude in London
first! The only reason such a ridiculous
stop-over works in reality is because the
Earth is flat.
48) On a ball-Earth Santiago, Chile to Johannesburg, South Africa should be an easy flight all taking place below the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern hemisphere, yet every listed flight makes a curious re-fueling stop in Senegal near the Tropic of Cancer in the North hemisphere first! When mapped on a flat Earth the reason why is clear to see, however, Senegal is actually directly in a straight-line path half-way between the two.
They are all basically both the same argument. They just use different locations. I found a graphic that some Flat Earthers use to illustrate this argument. Here it is:
Note
that the routes were clearly chosen so that they would
cross Antarctica, and they ignore shorter, actual
airline routes that go to and from the places
depicted and do not require flying
over Antarctica. Moreover, the route they show from San Paolo, Brazil, to Perth, Australia, which goes closest to the South Pole, would be a 9,240 mile trip, and the range of a Boeing 747-400 is just 8,380 miles.
I did a little research and found that, contrary to the claims in the illustration and in the "proofs," anyone who has the money can fly around the earth (and around Antarctica) on commercial flights. And it can be done on just 4 hops:
1. Sydney, Australia, to Santiago, Chile, via Qantas Airlines. Distance: 7,055 miles. Time: 12 hours, 20
minutes. 5 non-stop flights per week Cost: $1,920, one way. 2. Santiago, Chile, to San Paulo, Brazil, via LATAM. Distance: 1,604 miles Time: 4
hours, 10 minutes. Many daily non-stop flights. Cost: $741, one way.
3. San Paulo, Brazil, to Johannesburg, South
Africa, via South African Airways Distance: 4,620 miles. Time: 10 hours 25 minutes. 1 - 2 non-stop flights per day. Cost:
$1,982, one way. 4. Johannesburg, South Africa, to Sydney, Australia, via Qantas. Distance: 6,934 miles. Time:11 hours, 40 minutes. 1 non-stop flight per day. Cost: $1,270, one way.
Total distance: 20,213 miles. Total cost: $5,913 On a projected map with the South Pole in the center, the 4 hops look like this:
On the Flat Earth map, however, the 4 hops look like this:
And that is where the absurdity of the Flat Earth theory can be clearly seen. To get from Sydney to Santiago, you have to fly across the flat earth world, passing over Los Angeles, California! There doesn't seem to be any way to measure distances on the Flat Earth map, but on a globe, a flight from Sydney to Santiago that passes over Los Angeles would be 13,084 miles, much farther than directly from Sydney to Santiago on a globe, and far beyond the range of a Boeing 747-400.
And, of course, when flying on the flat earth from Johannesburg to Sydney, you would fly over Saudi Arabia and China. On a globe, the flight is mostly over the Indian Ocean.
The question then becomes: When people take these flat earth flights, how is it they do not notice that they are flying over land when they should be flying over the ocean? And how do they make it in one hop if the distance is greater than the distance the plane can fly without refueling? Do the Flat Earthers believe all the passengers are hypnotized or drugged as soon as they get aboard?
Or maybe the Flat Earthers are just incapable of understanding simple logic.
As I see it, the answer to the question is clearly "NO." Some people agree. But, it seems that many other people on the Internet strongly disagree. And the TV show "Mythbusters" agreed with the naysayers.
This is an analysis of the dispute. The question and illustration above are what Albert Einstein would have called a "gedanken," or a "thought experiment." It is probably impractical or far too expensive to perform in real life, but there is nothing to stop the experiment from being performed in our imaginations. You just need to have an imagination.
This is how the "thought experiment" works:
We have a 747 setting on a conveyor belt. There is a wind sock or flag next to the conveyor belt which hangs limp, indicating there is no wind blowing. Since "the conveyor belt is designed to exactly match the speed of the wheels, moving in the opposite direction," the flag pole can be used as a guide to assure this happens. When the plane starts to move, the flag pole will get farther away unless the conveyor belt also moves to keep the plane in the same place. So, we need some kind of device that makes sure the airplane always remains in the same spot. That way, the conveyor belt will "exactly match the speed of the wheels, moving in the opposite direction."
The pilot of the plane can push his throttles full forward, and the conveyor belt will compensate to keep the plane in the same place, the speed of the wheels exactly matching the speed of the conveyor belt.
Can the plane take off? Of course not. It is basically just standing still. It cannot get any lift. There is no air rushing across the wings to create low pressure atop the wings to lift the plane. That is what the "thought experiment" was designed to illustrate.
So, how can anyone possibly disagree with this?
Mostly they disagree because they misunderstand it. Many disagree because they consider the "thought experiment" to be impossible, and they create a different experiment that they agree with.
The "thought experiment" might have been easier to understand if the pilot was in control of the experiment instead of the conveyor belt. That way, the conveyor belt can be set to just run faster and faster until it reaches about 200 mph or beyond normal takeoff speed.
When the conveyor belt starts moving, the pilot will see the flag pole moving away from him, indicating that his plane is being hauled backwards. He can then add power to his engines to compensate, keeping the flag at the same angle to the aircraft. As the conveyor belt moves faster and faster, the pilot applies more and more power to the engines which generate more and more thrust. But the weight of the plane on the conveyor belt remains the same. No air moves across the wings, so the plane does not lift and cannot take off. If the conveyor belt reaches 200 or 300 or 500 miles per hour, the plane will still be in the same spot. All the engines are doing is preventing the the airplane from moving backwards. The wheels will be flattened on the bottom just as if the plane was parked.
In reality, of course, the constant flexing of the rubber in the tires as they rotate under the full weight of the plane at high speeds would cause the tires to overheat and burst, and the engines would also overheat and either shut down or explode because they are designed to fly best in the cold air of higher altitudes. But the plane would not take off.
What are the arguments from the naysayers? The first argument (on a web site HERE) is "The wording of this quiz is wrong and makes it physically impossible," and "we can not design the conveyor belt to move at the same speed as wheels." In effect, he admits that the plane cannot take off unless you reword the "thought experiment" to allow it. He argues that the way the thought experiment is phrased does not allow for an imbalance of forces to move the plane forward.
So, he wants the experiment done the way it was done on Mythbusters. And he includes a link to the Mythbusters episode about the thought experiment:
But the Mythbusters experiment did not have a conveyor belt. They had a long canvas cloth laying on pavement. And a truck pulling the cloth under the plane is supposed to simulate a conveyor belt. But, it doesn't, because the weight of the plane is being held up by solid earth, not by the cloth and not by any conveyor belt.
When power is applied to the engine in the video, the plane can be seen to move almost normally relative to the traffic cones marking the side of the runway. And the plane took off. Why? Because it wasn't the experiment in the original question. The plane was moving across the stationary earth, not sitting on a moving conveyor belt. The cloth was being pulled out from under the plane, but the cloth was very long and therefore flexible enough to have little effect on the movement of the plane. That flexibility allowed the wheels to turn at the speed the plane moved relative to the earth. And the plane is allowed to move forward, almost as if the cloth wasn't there. They should have had high-speed cameras and marks on the tires to record the speed of the wheels versus the speed of the cloth and the speed of the ground. That would have shown that the plane moved almost as if the cloth wasn't there, totally ignoring the experiment.
Another web page HERE also argues that the original question is not realistic, and it also argues that if the conveyor belt is moving fast enough it will drag air with it and give the airplane the lift it needs to take off. That is highly doubtful, since the air being dragged will be very close to the earth and certainly won't be going OVER the wings, creating low pressure, which is what is needed to give the plane LIFT and allow it to take off.
Another web page HERE also argues that the question is unrealistic.
A web page HERE says the plane cannot take off, and then he opens the question for debate, getting responses for and against. There's another such page HERE.
There are more arguments HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. And there is a New York Times article from 2006 HERE.
As I see it, the question is HYPOTHETICAL. It is a "gedanken" thought experiment. As it is stated in the original question, the plane cannot take off. If you change the question and add other conditions, then you aren't answering the question. You are just arguing.
I've been trying to restrain myself, but I keep
thinking I need to write a comment about
President Donald Trump's screwball claim that he
was wiretapped by President Obama. It's
just one straw too many. So, here's my
comment.
In the days since Trump’s tweets
alleging the wiretapping were posted, the
White House has called for a congressional
investigation, declined to comment, dodged
questions, pointed to media reports that don’t
contain the information aides say they do and
analyzed the president’s use of quotation
marks — all while doubling down on his claim
without providing any evidence.
While doing research, I found this cartoon:
I keep thinking that President Trump simply
cannot think logically, he only thinks
emotionally. Evidence obviously has no
meaning to him. Only his beliefs have
meaning. If there's no evidence of wire
tapping, that just means the FBI hasn't looked
hard enough to find the evidence that Trump
believes must exist.
How can President Trump believe the evidence must
exist? Because some staffer comment or
news article or email or idea convinced him to
believe it. And once he believed it, it
becomes an emotional conclusion. What he
believes cannot be wrong, since that would mean
he is not as smart as he thinks he is.
There is no middle ground for those who think
emotionally. Those who think emotionally must
be right, and the only acceptable alternative is
that the world must be conspiring
against them to maliciously argue something is
wrong that must with absolute
certainty be right. If something they
argued for turns out to be a failure, it is
always the fault of those ignorant and malicious
people who disagreed with them.
This topic has special meaning to me because
I spent over a decade arguing with people who
believed that Muslims sent the anthrax letters,
even though all
the evidence clearly said the letters were
sent by an American scientist.
And those
True Believers are still out there arguing
the same things they argued ten years ago.
No facts or evidence will ever change their
minds. And, of course, they have no facts
or evidence to support their beliefs. As
with Trump, they want the FBI to find the facts
and evidence for them. They are just
absolutely certain that there is
evidence out there somewhere that will confirm
their unshakable beliefs.
It also seems that if these True Believers have
one totally unsupported belief, they also have
others. And they are totally certain about
all of them. The absurd claims were
probably never more absurd than when Trump
argued that millions of people voted illegally
in the election he won.
From my observations, it
appears that Trump was elected by people who
think the way he does, people who think
emotionally, not logically. Were they
driven by a hatred of foreigners, a fear of
foreigners or a hatred of the government in
general? Maybe a bit of all three.
All that appears certain is that were
"fed up" and wanted to elect a fast-talking
game show host to straighten out the
situation. Trump told them what they
wanted to hear, and they believed him.
Another thing that
Donald Trump has made very clear is that he had
absolutely no idea how complicated politics can
be. He was probably the only person in
America who thought that replacing "Obamacare"
would be a simple task.
I'm reminded of a comment in Eric Hoffer's book
"The True Believer" which said
the only way to change a True
Believer's mind is to convert him to a
different belief. "He cannot be
convinced, but only converted."
I have a paperback copy of Hoffer's book
somewhere in my library, but I couldn't find
it when I looked for it yesterday. (It's
probably behind some other book.) But I
quickly found a
free pdf copy on the Internet.
Searching through it for the word "convert," I
found this full quote:
The fanatic
cannot be weaned away from his cause by an
appeal to his reason or moral sense. He
fears compromise and cannot be persuaded
to qualify the certitude and righteousness
of his holy cause. But he finds no
difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly
from one holy cause to another. He cannot be convinced
but only converted. His
passionate attachment is more vital than the
quality of the cause to which he is
attached.
I also found this quote which
seems very much to apply to President Trump:
Both by
converting and antagonizing, he shapes the
world in his own image.
And this quote also seems to
apply to President Trump:
The proselytizing
fanatic strengthens his own faith by
converting others. The creed whose
legitimacy is most easily challenged is
likely to develop the strongest
proselytizing impulse.
So, we can assume that as
more and more of Trump's absurd beliefs get
shot down and debunked by people citing facts
and evidence, the more Trump will become
convinced that he is right and the world is
conspiring against him.
Of course, if Trump were to be impeached, that
would mean that Vice President Mike Spence
would become President. Some consider
that to be a worse situation: It's better to
have an incompetent President than an evil
President.
Personally, I think it is more likely that
Donald Trump will resign before the end of his
four-year term than that he will be
impeached. If he doesn't find being
President the "fun" and the boost to his ego
that he thought it would be, and if he
constantly suffers setbacks in his plans, he
could just "throw in the towel" and say "The
hell with it." He'd blame others for his
failures, of course.
On the other hand, if President Trump manages to
start a war somewhere, that would mean all bets
are off.
I've been wanting to write a
comment about Donald Trump for weeks, even
though I try very hard to avoid thinking about
him. The problem is: He's on the TVs they
have at the gym where I work out four times a
week. I seem to work out at the exact same
time that Trump's spokesman Sean Spicer gives
his daily news briefing.
When I get home, the evening news every
night seems to have some story about Trump's
latest screwball tweet. And The Late
Show with Stephen Colbert always has some
hilarious comments about the Trump absurdities.
It's all very hilarious.. But, at the same time
it isn't very funny at all.
A couple years ago, I took a course titled Space, Time & Einstein at the WorldScienceU.com web site. It's taught by Professor Brian Greene of Columbia University in New York City. There were things about the course that bothered me, and I started thinking about Time Dilation and how it really works. There was something in Professor Greene's lecture on
"The Reality of Past, Present and Future"
(Module #8) that bothered me a lot. But then I forgot all about it as I organized my thoughts and worked on my scientific papers on "Time Dilation Re-visualized" and "What is Time?"
Then, while waiting to see if my newest paper on Time Dilated Light will be accepted by a peer reviewed journal, I decided to watch parts of Professor Greene's course over again.
I want to make it clear before continuing that Professor Greene is not teaching anything that other physics professors aren't also teaching. The only difference is the Professor Greene's course and lectures are on-line where I can easily access them.
I soon realized what bothered me about "Module #8"
back then. Prof. Greene was
breaking Time down into "quanta," i.e., into
moments, like the individual frames of a movie. And he was
viewing time as a mathematician would view
time. Plus, the lecture concludes with
Professor Greene saying that, "What this collectively
tells us is that the traditional way we
think about reality - the present is real,
the past is gone, the future is yet to be -
that is without any real basis in physics.What we are really learning from these ideas is
that the past, the present and the future are
all equally real."
If you believe that, then you can also argue
that everything we see may be equally unreal -
from a mathematician's point of view.
Looking over the course schedule, I
noticed that Module #3 was titled "The Speed of
Light." That's the subject of my latest scientific paper. So, I watched Module #3 again.
Wow! It's total nonsense!
Professor Greene explains that the fact that the
velocity of the light-emitting-object (when it
is coming toward you or going away from you)
cannot be added to or subtracted from the speed
of light you perceive is proof that the
speed of light is a "universal constant."It proves no such thing!
It is simply proof that the direction an object is moving does not affect the speed of
light coming from the object. I couldn't
remember any of that from when I took the course
in early 2014. Evidently, it had no
significance to me then. Now I see it is just plain WRONG.
But there was even more nonsense to come. I
then watched the lecture on "Time In Motion"
(Module #5), which is about Time Dilation.
In the screen capture below, he is explaining
how the stationary clock by his hand runs faster
than the moving clock off to his right because
light bounces off mirrors more slowly when the
mirrors are moving while light is being used to
measure time. That is total nonsense,
and it is also a demonstration that has very
little to do with Time Dilation or
reality!
He was teaching his students that Time
Dilation is just "an optical illusion."
He didn't use that term, of course. He was
carefully explaining how a stationary
person will view an object as moving while a
moving person will view the stationary person as
moving. Furthermore, it
is a totally wrong and silly
demonstration. It's twisting
the facts to rationalize a belief! In
reality, light would not
bounce at angles between moving mirrors, light
would move in a straight line and the mirrors
would simply move out of the path of the
bouncing light! Plus, if the speed of light is fixed and universal, a stationary light clock would give the same result on Earth as on Jupiter and in empty space, and it woulddisprove Einstein's theory of gravitational time dilation!
It would have been better if Prof. Greene had
used the explanation of how a ball is perceived
to move if a child on a jet plane tosses it up
and down as the plane moves at 500 miles per
hour. The child will see the ball going
straight up and straight down, while some
imaginary viewer on the ground will see the ball
travel in an arc that covers over a thousand
feet laterally between the time the ball leaves
the boy's hand and the time he catches it
again. It really has nothing
to do with Time Dilation, it only has to
do with Relativity, and therefore it
is the same as saying Time Dilation is just an
optical illusion.
That is where everyone goes wrong!
They do not think of Time Dilation as a real
phenomenon all by itself, they only
think of it in terms of relativity!
And, it was really bizarre when I watched Module
#7, "Time Dilation - Experimental Evidence," in
which Prof. Greene explains how Time Dilation
has been confirmed by people carrying
atomic clocks aboard airplanes, and he explained
how muons exist longer when they are traveling
faster. Professor Greene makes absolutely
no mention of gravitational time dilation.
Nor does he explain who was the "observer" when
the atomic clocks were flown around the
world. He doesn't put 2 and 2 together.
Module #12 was the most absurd of all.
It's titled "The Twin Paradox," and it shows how
preposterous the explanations can get when mathematicians
try to rationalize and distort Time Dilation to
make it fit their equations. Prof.
Greene uses "fraternal twins," George and
Gracie. While George remains on Earth,
Gracie goes off on a space ship to some nearby
star and then returns. That's simple
enough, but Prof. Greene then explains how
neither twin knows who is really moving.
He has Gracie arguing that her space ship is
standing still while George and the planet Earth
moved away from her, while George argues just
the opposite. Prof. Greene then explains
that George is right because Gracie felt
acceleration, which wouldn't happen if she had
been standing still. It's an absolutely silly
explanation of Time Dilation. In what
universe would a space traveler think that she
was standing still while the planet she just
rocketed away from must be moving away from her
and then somehow it reversed course to come back
to her once again? It's idiotic!
It also shows how mathematicians do not care about logic or reasoning. They only care about how the math works. The math says that an astronaut can stand still while the Earth moves away from his rocket, therefore it must be possible.
At several points in the course, Professor Greene pauses to explain to his students that if what he is saying doesn't seem to make any sense, then they should take the version of his course that focuses on mathematics.
Yes, why not? After all, in the world of mathematics "garbage in, garbage out" is totally acceptable if the equation looks clever. Nothing needs to be logical or make sense if the mathematics work. Science today is about mathematics, not about logic -- or science.
I not picking on Prof. Greene. He's just teaching the same nonsense that most physics professors seem to be teaching. As stated above, Prof. Greene
merely put his course on the Internet
where I could take it and view the lectures over
again. I should be grateful. It
taught me a great deal, but definitely not what
Prof. Greene intended to teach.
I don't see any way to contact Prof. Greene directly, so I posted a "zinger" question to the discussions for Module #5. Click HERE to see if you can view it. It works for me.
As evidence that other teachers are teaching the same nonsense, here's a video that also uses a "light clock" to explain relativity:
